5 PRIDE fights between defenses, with the 5th fight (Ogawa) being the same night.
Fighter disrespect ≠ Fighter bashing. Ignorance of facts and contempt for history aren't punishable offenses.
The fan culture around MMA, and many individual fans themselves, just need to grow and mature.
It's wild that this thread is this long and still going. I've never been on a basketball forum, but I can't imagine there being threads about Magic Johnson's or Michael Jordan's strengths and weaknesses with people shitting on their abilities and accomplishments and denying that they should even be in the GOAT conversation. Or threads on hockey forums about Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux being losers who wouldn't be able to hack it in today's game. I've never understood it, but MMA fans seem to be the most toxic and the most hateful of their own sport's history and the fighters who came before. I can't even imagine boxing fans gleefully shitting on Joe Louis or Rocky Marciano. Yet, there are MMA fans who don't just disagree with considering Fedor the GOAT - which, in a sport that has boasted talents like GSP, Anderson, Jones, DJ, and Khabib, is understandable and arguing about the who is the best of the best is always fun - but who think that he doesn't even deserve to be in the conversation, and who take a perverse pleasure in making that case as ignorantly and obnoxiously as possible.
This is a weird sport with a weird group of fans. Fortunately, however, the person to whom such idiocy matters the least - indeed, to whom it literally doesn't matter - is the man himself.
As a Cro Cop fan, I'll always be salty about Nog grabbing the rope to keep the mount and then snatching the armbar shortly thereafter. Cro Cop was sitting up and almost had the leverage to get up from off the bottom, but Nog gave the rope a quick grab and kept his balance/position.
Khabib: "Fedor is the GOAT."
GSP: "Fedor is the GOAT."
Jose Aldo: "Fedor is the GOAT."
Jon Jones: "Fedor belongs on Mount Rushmore of MMA"
Jarl from the internet: "Fedor isn't the greatest ever or close to being Jordan or Gretsky of MMA. He's more like NBA players from the 1950s."
Clearly it's not just Fedor fans who need to stop living in the past, it's the greatest fighters ever too. If Fedor was equivalent to "Bob Cousey" of MMA then all time greats like Jones, GSP and Khabib wouldnt refer to him as the GOAT because NOBODY refers to Cousey as the GOAT. The way they speak of him is more congruent with Jordan. Maybe it's the insecure shills on sherdog who need to accept the fact that Fedor is the GOAT?
Comparing Fedor to Bob Cousey suggests that there has been 70 years of evolution in HW MMA since Fedor was the best in the world lol which only a moron would think. The HW top 10 today is weaker in terms of skill than it was in 2011 and weaker than it was in 2005 when Fedor was the most dominant fighter in the world.
If there has been 70 years of evolution in HW MMA then how would you explain guys like Derrick Lewis and Tai Tuivasa being in the top 5 today? Both of them have primitive skiillsets which would still be considered primitive skiillsets in 2011 and 2005. Lewis has fought for a title twice.
These guys wouldn't be top 5 HWs in 2011 or in 2005. Not only would a 2003 Fedor absolutely beat the shit out of them but he would most definitely be a top 5 HW today at worst if not the champion at best.
If today's NBA players who are equivalents of Lewis and Tuivasa went back to Couseys era in the 50s they would dominate the sport. If Lewis and Tuivasa went back to 2005, they would have a hard time making the top 10. This shows that your Cousey comparison is intellectually dishonest and historically inaccurate.
Fedor was the #1 P4P fighter in the world for 7 years. He won 18 consecutive fights after becoming the champion and didn't lose for a decade while destroying multiple HWs in that era who would be top 5 HWs today.
This kind of dominance is more congruent with a Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal or Hakeem Olajuwan than with Bob Cousey because like Fedor, all 3 of these guys were legendary amazing players then and they would be just as legendary and amazing today.
Your post if full of exactly the kind if stupidity you expect from some random hater on the internet named Jarl.
It was neither automatic nor an assumption. It was a judgment based on facts and my eyes. Based on the facts, and based on my eyes, Fedor at his best is the best fighter that I have ever seen fight. If I wanted to play the fantasy ideal/prime fighter game, I think that there have been individual performances by fighters like Ricco Rodriguez against Randy Couture at UFC 39 and Cro Cop in the OWGP finals who give me pause when picking Fedor to beat them...but I still do, because his ability to always win no matter who his opponent was or what happened in the fight was amazing to witness. For the 10 years from 2000-2010, the MMA world got the gift of the greatest fighter to grace the sport. Was Fedor at his best when he was nearly decapitating Arlovski and Rogers? No. But then was Gretzky as good when he was with the Rangers as he was when he was with the Oilers and the Kings? Was Jordan as good in the 1998 playoffs as he was in the 1992 playoffs? No. But that doesn't change the fact that nobody to ever step onto a sheet of ice or a hardwood floor have been able to play the games like Gretzky or Jordan at their best. And no one who has ever stepped through the ropes of a ring or entered a cage has ever been able to fight like Fedor at his best. That's why he's the GOAT.
Speaking of assumptions, it sounds like you're assuming that the sport of MMA has changed so drastically that we are hardly speaking of the same thing when we talk about Fedor fighting Nogueira on the one hand and Ngannou fighting Stipe on the other. That, however, is patently false. Prime Cro Cop would've kicked Stipe's internal organs out of his body and prime Nogueira would've tapped Ngannou inside of a round.
Speaking of incorrect analogies, it would be more accurate given their dominance, their remaining records, and the esteem that they get from their fellow athletes to cite Gordie Howe or Stan Mikita for hockey and Kareem or Dr. J for basketball. Even improving your attempt to invalidate Fedor's claim to GOAT status, however, I still submit that Fedor is the MJ of MMA, not the Cousy or even the Dr. J.
We don't. We just wish that newer fans - or hell, all fans - actually studied and remembered the past so that their opinions, even if contrary to ours, were at least informed opinions.
Ricco Rodriguez was a vastly superior wrestler to Nog but Nog took him down. And Bob Sapp outweighed Nog by 150 pounds but Nog got him down, too. And for good measure, Cro Cop also had better TDD than Ngannou but Nog even got him down. You can disagree with me on the likelihood, but to express dismay at even the possibility is just ignorant.
Yes, and at 33 Fedor nearly decapitated both Arlovski and Rogers despite already showing signs of decline compared to his peak years earlier. You realize that you're corroborating my point, right?
Fedor got caught with a big punch after his prime, so that's only a big deal to you, and if you'd ever actually seen Nog's first fight with Hendo in Rings, you'd know that that split decision loss was one of the many decisions that Decision Dan, as he used to be known, was questionably awarded. The UFC may have the more famous judging problems these days, but Rings was known as a place with iffy decisions, and anyone with eyes knows that Nog should've been the one to go on to fight (and almost certainly beat) Babalu in the King of Kings 1999 tournament final.
Then again, Ngannou once lost to someone nobody's ever heard of and fought a shittier fight against Derrick Lewis than either Fedor or Nog ever fought in their entire careers, but you can overlook these blemishes to consider him so vastly superior a fighter that to even mention Fedor and Nog in the same breath as him strikes you as so ludicrous as to deserve being laughed out of court?
